Wayward Philosophy
Imagine a good philosopher (part phenomenologist, part Daoist) who’s also a genial and ingenious writer and you have Will Buckingham.

Velveteen Rabbi
Poet and rabbi Rachel Barenblat’s blog is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary Jewish thought and devotional practice. She always brings up the rear in blogrolls, so we’re giving her an extra-long write-up to make up for it. (Seriously, though, what sane blogger chooses a name beginning with a V?)

Why these links?

Time was when every blog had a blogroll right in the sidebar. In these more mobile-focused times, that’s perceived as extra clutter and has fallen out of fashion. But especially for a site like Via Negativa where most posts are original creative work rather than commentary, and therefore contain few outgoing links, we think it’s as important as ever to maintain a list of some of our favorite places on the web—especially those that aren’t as well-known as they should be.

We’ve been reading many of these bloggers for a very long time, so they’ve come to seem like friends and neighbors, but we do try to keep the needs of Via Negativa readers in mind when deciding what to include. Thus for example we tend not to include blogs that haven’t been updated in more than six months, or blogs that serve merely to record the author’s publications elsewhere (not that there’s anything wrong with that). It’s also worth pointing out that while some of the above-linked sites are run by good friends, we link with absolutely no expectation of quid pro quo. Any requests to engage in reciprocal linking will be deleted unread. (It doesn’t take very much of that before Google figures out what you’re trying to do and demotes your sites in its search rankings. But more than that, it’s just unfair to readers.)